Who We Are

Staff

Zena Agha is Al-Shabaka's US Policy Fellow. Her areas of expertise include Israeli settlement-building in the occupied Palestinian territory with a special focus on Jerusalem, modern Middle Eastern history, and spatial practices. She has previously worked at the Economist, the Iraqi Embassy in Paris, and the Palestinian delegation at UNESCO. In addition to opinion pieces in The Independent, and The Nation, Zena’s media credits include the BBC World Service, BBC Arabic and El Pais. Zena was awarded the Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard University, completing her Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies.

Megan Driscoll is Al-Shabaka’s Outreach and Development Manager. She holds a master’s degree with distinction in Participation, Power, and Social Change from the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies, where her research focused on the construction of Palestinian counter-discourses and decolonized research practices. From 2012 - 2016, Megan worked in the Occupied West Bank with various Palestinian NGOs. Her professional interests and background span the fields of critical development, decolonization, popular education and resistance, and human rights advocacy.

Yara Hawari is the Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter. Her research focused on oral history projects and memory politics, framed more widely within Indigenous Studies. Yara taught various undergraduate courses at the University of Exeter and continues to work as a freelance journalist, publishing for various media outlets, including Al Jazeera English, Middle East Eye and the Independent.

Mimi Kirk is Al-Shabaka’s Managing Director. She previously served as research director for the Middle East Institute and as editor for the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. She is co-editor (with Rochelle Davis) of Palestine and the Palestinians in the Twenty-first Century(Indiana University Press, 2013), as well as several other volumes on the Middle East. Her writing has appeared in Middle East Report, Jadaliyya, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy, among other outlets. She holds an MA in cultural studies from Emory University and an MA in nonfiction writing from Johns Hopkins University.

Alaa Tartir is Program Advisor to Al-Shabaka. Tartir also serves as a research associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding, and a visiting fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland. Amongst other positions, Tartir was a post-doctoral fellow at The Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) from 2016-17, a visiting scholar and lecturer (2015) at Utrecht University’s Department of History and Art History, The Netherlands, and was, between 2010 and 2015, a researcher in international development studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he earned his PhD. Follow Tartir on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaatartir and read his publications at www.alaatartir.com

Dalal Yassine is Al-Shabaka’s Commissioning & Outreach Editor. She is a lawyer and advocate for gender and human rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Dalal has previously worked with several Palestinian NGOs in Lebanon and formerly served as coordinator for The Right to Work Campaign for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon. She is the co-author of The Legal Status of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon (2007) and completed a multi-site study titled The Empowerment of Women in Refugee Camps in Lebanon.

Board

Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Sam Bahour does business consulting as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information technology sector and start-ups. He is also the Chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy. He helped establish PALTEL and the PLAZA Shopping Center. Until recently, he served on the board of trustees of Birzeit University and was the University’s treasurer. He is also a Director at the Arab Islamic Bank and a board member at Just Vision. Bahour is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians (Olive Branch Press). He writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and his work is posted at www.epalestine.com.

Nadia Hijab is co-founder and board president of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She served as its Executive Director between 2011 and March 2018. A writer, public speaker and media commentator, Hijab’s first book, Womanpower: The Arab debate on women at work was published by Cambridge University Press and she co-authored Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel (I. B. Tauris). She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East magazine before serving at the United Nations in New York. She is a co-founder and former co-chair of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and now serves on its advisory board.

Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Osamah Khalil is a co-founder, board treasurer, and former co-director of Al-Shabaka. He is Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Khalil is the author of America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State (Harvard University Press, 2016).

Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Mary Nazzal-Batayneh is board secretary and a UK barrister and has vast experience campaigning for human rights. She has worked with several civil society organizations including the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. In her capacity as the Chair of the Palestine Legal Aid Fund, she is part of a legal movement to hold Israel accountable for crimes committed against the Palestinian people. She holds degrees from Columbia University, SOAS University of London, the College of Law, and Inns of Court School of Law. Mary is also the President of Landmark Hotels.

Alaa, a Program Advisor to Al-Shabaka, is a research associate and visiting fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

An independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self determination within the framework of international law.